Part 3 — Slide Eighty-One
I reached over and clicked the carousel forward, and the next slide dropped into place with a soft thunk.
It was Mamas handwriting again, as big as a bedsheet on Moniques dining room wall.
“Count them, Bernie. You only have one hundred thirty-two receipts, and that is exactly right. The contract was eleven years. Your last payment was due in March.”
“You made it. I wrote in my own book that it was paid in full.”
The room was quiet. Someone near the cake set down a plate.
“The signed warranty deed is in the Folgers can on the top shelf of the hall closet, behind the Christmas napkins. I signed it in 2014 and have kept it there ever since, waiting for you to finish paying.”
Monique tried to speak and nothing came out.
A third line showed up on the white wall, in smaller letters. “And Monique, the memorandum of the contract is recorded at the county. I did that for your own good, so you would never be tempted to do what I am afraid you will do.”
My mother had known both of her daughters better than either of us had known ourselves.
Gerald, my husband, was already on his feet with his car keys. He drove to the old house on Maple Street and came back in forty minutes carrying a coffee can with a red lid.
He set it on the sideboard under the light of the projector. I pried the lid off, and there lay the deed, folded in a plastic bag, along with a note that said, “Bernie. Take the house, the porch swing and the apple tree.”
We took the deed to the county recorder on Monday morning. The clerk stamped it, and it was done.
Monique brought back the rings and the van that same week. She had spent weeks telling herself that Mama owed her something for being the daughter who stayed local, and the walls of her own home had finally said otherwise.
She asked me, over coffee, whether I could ever forgive her. I said I already had, but that I would ask her to repay the money she had taken from the checkbook, and that I would take it slow.
Then she told me something that made me laugh and cry at once. She had gone back to the rummage sale the day after, ready to buy the slides back, and the church hat lady had already sold them to a man who ran a photo shop.
The photo shop man still had them. He had scanned every one, because he thought they were too good to throw away, and he handed over a flash drive for nothing.
That Sunday we hung a bedsheet on the Maple Street porch and showed all two hundred slides. When the Halloween one came up, Monique shouted, “That is me with the broken arm!”
And everyone on the street clapped, because everybody was still here.